America’s foolhardy ban on natural gas exports

Natural gas flares are seen at an oil pump site outside of Williston, North Dakota March 11, 2013.

One of the many blessings Mother Nature has provided us with is the banana. Bananas can be consumed as a final product – raw, fried, boiled, etc. They can also be used as intermediate inputs for banana bread, or, as in Thomas Pynchon’s “Gravity’s Rainbow,” for Banana Breakfasts that even some who are allergic or outright hostile to bananas can appreciate.

What else? Ah yes, we can sell bananas to other people, and use the proceeds to acquire different delicious fruits or even goods and services from entirely different product categories. So many competing ends, so few bananas to allocate to them … how do we decide what to do with them?